The Andalusian technology center, based in Aerópolis, will contribute its experience in the development of aerial robotics technology, and will lead the technological development of highly autonomous and integrated drones in the airspace
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is one of the great challenges of our cities, which are facing a paradigm shift in the transport of goods and people. Moving towards more sustainable and smart cities, while ensuring the safe integration of all types of operations with highly autonomous drones (aerial robots) in urban environments through the use of advanced U-space / UTM services, is one of the main objectives of an H2020 project of the European Union that has just been launched, and of which the Advanced Center for Aerospace Technologies (CATEC) is part: AMU-LED.
The project, which will last 2 years, is led by the Everis company and involves 17 companies and institutions from Europe and the United States: Airbus, AirHub, Altitude Angel, ANRA Technologies, Boeing Research & Technology-Europe, FADA-CATEC, Cranfield University, EHang, ENAIRE, Gemeente Amsterdam, INECO, ITG, Jeppesen, NLR, Space53 and Tecnalia.
CATEC will contribute its experience in the development of aerial robotics technology and will lead the technological development of highly autonomous drones integrated into the airspace. In addition, CATEC is the leader of one of the AMU-LED tasks related to the definition of the drone requirements from the test scenarios and the project objectives. The autonomous drone (aerial robot) technology developed at CATEC will also be validated in the final experimental flights of the project (scheduled for 2022), the largest to date, which will take place in Spain, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In addition to CATEC, the ATLAS Experimental Flight Center, in Jaén, will also host experimental flights of air taxis within the AMU-LED project, which once again demonstrates the great potential that this sector has in Andalusia.
The Andalusian technology center has extensive experience in UAM, such as the research it has been leading since January last year, the IMOV3D project, in which the development of advanced technologies and functionalities related to autonomous air mobility is also being promoted.
AMU-LED will include real tests and simulations of more than 100 flight hours, combining different unmanned aerial systems and different scenarios, use cases and applications. Air taxi operations, cargo transportation, delivery of goods and medical equipment, infrastructure inspection, police surveillance and support to emergency services will be carried out. The project will explore and demonstrate the benefits of decongesting roads thanks to air mobility, as well as improvements in the transport of people and goods, the reduction and flexibility of travel times and the reduction of pollution and traffic accidents.
The results of AMU-LED will provide very valuable information to regulatory authorities such as EASA, contributing to the development and establishment of regulations in the field of urban air mobility. AMU-LED is a H2020 project of the European Union framed in SESAR Joint Undertaking (grant agreement No 101017702). The objective of SESAR is to ensure the modernization of air traffic management in Europe, where urban air mobility is a key element. This requires the creation of new concepts and regulations to design, structure and industrialize a system that is also sustainable and interoperable with current air traffic.
